Leadership cannot be taught

One giant gaping hole exists in the idea that leadership can be taught. People.

People, humans, make teaching leadership impossible. We can teach people what we think is meant by leadership, but there is no way to teach people to do it. At least not in the way in which thousands of businesses waste their money.

This is an Inigo Montoya thing. A veritable horde of academics and consultants insist that what they measure, what they teach, and what they base their remunerations and reputations upon, is leadership. It’s not, it’s a combination of good management skills, and listing/ play acting the current trends of what appearing to be a decent human is ‘like’. Oh, and the vast majority of people calling themselves a leader, aren’t. Some of them might be managers.

To employ an analogy, what this erstwhile bunch has been calling dogs, are cats. You can (I can, and have, and do) point out that they’re cats ‘til you’re blue in the face, but they look at you blankly and continue with ‘anyway, about these dogs’. They’ll come at you with shedloads of “scientific” and “evidence-based” data to show you the great efficacy of whatever they’re peddling, but they’re measuring the wrong thing, giving it the wrong title. It’s not leadership.

“We’re all individuals”

For the next bit, the capital Bs and lower-case bs of Being and being are important. Being means ‘us’, being is how we are being at any one time – think mood. Each of us is our own Being which changes constantly, however slightly, affected by myriad factors. Our mood, or how we are being at any one time is a function of what concerns us at that time, what is on our minds, our life situation, what we’re doing etc. We are a Being that is a range of possibilities according to what’s going on with us, we are not a set, stable ‘thing’.

Sometimes, we go to work.

At work, as at all times, we are ourselves at work. We may be trying to act a certain way, but that is outward, inside, we are still us, but a modified version behaviourally. There are a few situations of work where its acute nature is overwhelming, and we are primarily the Being that is being at work. For example, intense team events like sports or military operations, or playing in an orchestra. In such situations, we may enter “flow”. To attain flow, we must attain mastery, which takes a very long time even for the most talented. Leadership courses are not going to give anyone mastery of leadership and being a manager or ‘boss’ for a long time isn’t necessarily going to do that either.

Work is a situation that we are more or less concerned about at any given time. We are one of a number of people contractually bound to be somewhere and/ or do something in exchange for money. Each of us has our own reasons (cares, concerns) for entering into this arrangement. We may be benevolent people and try to be as nice and helpful as we can, but it’s the “as we can” that’s important. If our own position is at issue, we will pretty much all look out for ourselves. So will the people with the firmest grip on the greasy pole of the organisation. Everyone and everything are expendable. In situations like redundancy, the mealy-mouthed legalese we are required to either spout or listen to is just management, it’s not leadership.

Organisations are not “systems”

There are many highly (and many more hardly at all), well-educated, even intellectually praised, and celebrated people that are convinced that ‘work’, a business, or organisation, is a “system”. Something enclosed, something they can take in isolation and make measurements of and predictions for. There may be trends and patterns, but no organisation is a system, because there are people in it. They are not locked into a closed system, and they are not locked into being a work unit.

Work is a collective of individuals with appropriate skills who congregate around a common experience so they can participate in ‘life’, in unique ways.

But there must be some leaders

Yes, rarely.

A leader is a Being whose character and abilities at a particular time are such that they inspire others to acquiesce to their judgement and decisions or seek their guidance, etc., It is certainly possible for this to be developed in some people that consistently demonstrate such a propensity. However, you cannot teach these attributes to just anyone. The sheer volume of people that are taught to be ‘like’ leaders and ‘act as if’ is ridiculous.

It is great and mischievous nonsense that leadership models, which have morphed many times (you’d think the very expensive consultants and learned eggheads would have nailed this by now huh), can supposedly be foisted upon organisations. Organisations are groups of people temporarily more or less engaged in caring about that organisation (work).

It was not possible to teach Earnest Shackleton to return to Elephant Island, nor to teach him what to say or how to say it. His own history, historicity, time and place, and epigenetics came into play. Certainly, in his history and historicity, there would have been a development of the attributes which made him a leader. He was rare, special.

Leadership as emergence in special people, rare people, is these days poo-pooed. I do not hold with this at all, this is exactly what leaders are, they visibly and obviously show their decision-making in the open and live by the consequences – think great, or even good, team sports leaders or military leaders. These people leave themselves nowhere to hide and are quick to highlight those in their teams.

There is no leadership programme, or system, and no teaching method that can turn someone into a leader. They emerge and can certainly be nurtured but this requires highly specialized situations and very small group and individual attention. Other than that, what’s on offer is cat training – management ‘skills’ and lists of ways to try to act so people think you’re alright. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, it’s to be encouraged. But be honest, and call a cat, a cat. It’s management training.

A person may be a great manager who takes delight in helping people when they can and offers good advice and mentorship. That’s all fine, these are good qualities. A person might be a great and industrious manager of people who is respected and looked up to. However, when the going gets rough they will almost always preserve themselves and their own position. They will hang on to what they can and ‘do what’s necessary to others. This is why they are managers that are as decent as they can be, and not leaders.

You cannot teach leadership. You can teach people about it though.